Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk
320 | More DMG Previews, Discworld RPG Over $1 million, Chris Perkins No Longer Production Lead, and more!
Sun, 20 Oct 2024
This week, Morrus, PJ, and Jessica talk about all the week’s tabletop RPG news including more DMG previews, Discworld RPG breaks $1 million, Chris Perks no longer production lead, and more! -------------------- News Discworld RPG Kickstarternow over $1 million https://www.enworld.org/threads/discworlds-headed-for-a-million-dollars.707337/ Discworld RPG live stream from Modiphius https://www.enworld.org/threads/watch-this-discworld-livestream-game-from-modiphius.707286/ Vaesen travels to Prague and Stockholm in new expansions https://www.enworld.org/threads/vaesen-travels-to-prague-and-stockholm-in-new-expansions.707365/ Call of Cthulhu in a Prison https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/call-of-cthulhu-pentridge-prison-tours-tickets-1023143699347 Steve Jackson Games releasing Fighting Fantasy gamebooks in the US https://www.enworld.org/threads/fighting-fantasy-gamebooks-coming-to-america-via-steve-jackson-games.707386/ 2024 DMG will be Chris Perkins’s last book as Project Lead https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-2024-dungeon-masters-guide-is-chris-perkins-last-book-as-product-lead.707360/ Wyrd Science https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/499186/wyrd-science-vol-1-issues-1-6-bundle-bundle?affiliate_id=36142 Monstrous Menagerie II introduction https://www.enworld.org/threads/check-out-monstrous-menagerie-ii%E2%80%99s-introduction.707356/ Slayer’s Survival Kit and Hunter’s Journal on Backerkit https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/evil-hat/slayers-survival-kit-and-hunter-s-journal A deep dive into the 2024 Player’s Handbook https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-deep-dive-into-the-2024-d-d-players-handbook.707382/ A sneak peek at the 2024 Dungeon Masters’ Guide https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-sneak-peek-of-the-2024-d-d-dungeon-masters-guide.707331/ Five Big Takeaways from the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide https://www.enworld.org/threads/five-big-takeaways-from-the-2024-dungeon-masters-guide.707318/ Dungeons & Dragons has done away with the Adventuring Day https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeons-dragons-has-done-away-with-the-adventuring-day.707237/ Grewhawk now an option for DMs Guild material https://www.enworld.org/threads/you-can-now-make-greyhawk-stuff-on-dms-guild.707335/ Dungeons & Dragons may not come back to Greyhawk after the 2024 DMG https://www.enworld.org/threads/dungeons-dragons-may-not-come-back-to-greyhawk-after-2024-dungeon-masters-guide.707276/ -------------------- Please support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/morrus Don’t forget to join the Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1033145023517295/ and join us on Discord at https://discord.gg/VAuxX8M Ask your Listener Question on Twitter, email [email protected], or contact us on TikTok at TikTok -------------------- Hosts: Russ “Morrus” Morrissey, PJ Coffey, and Jessica Hancock Editing and post-production: Darryl Mott Theme Song: Steve Arnott Malach the Maleficent played by Darren Morrissey Check out all the media content from EN World at http://enliverpg.com
I'm Morgan Robbins, at MoriLoreMother on Twitter, designer for Level Up, Advanced 5th Edition, Mythic Odysseys of Theros, writer for Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frostmaiden, and you are listening to Morris' Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk.
Today's podcast is sponsored by the Royal Homeland Constabulary. If you dream of a hopeful future, with endless opportunity, travel and top-notch training, sign up to the RHC. You'll be paid one groat per week, you'll get your own straw cesspit in the communal barracks, and you'll have a wonderful time mingling with all the thieves, bandits, muggers and other assorted scum and villainy.
Sounds lovely. But when they say travel, they just mean down the street to find out who threw eggs at Madame Brandybog's garter show house. And it's usually just Bert.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Morris' unofficial tabletop RPG talk. I am Russ, a.k.a. Morris, or Morris, a.k.a. Russ, and with me this week is... PJ Coffey from the Southampton Guild of Rockland.
For us, as ever, it is a delight to be here. And joining us now, in all her reprehensible glory, she has truly brought the sunshine back to Southampton after a cold, miserable day.
We've got the one, the only, it's... It's me, Jessica from EM Publishing. I don't feel too much like a ray of sunshine today. I feel very tired by existence, but that is good to know. I am masking well.
Yeah, well, it's all the sun type that you brought with you. Well, I'm looking out the window and I'm not seeing an awful lot of sunlight, to be honest. It looks a bit greyish.
Yeah, it's a bit cloudy here.
Yeah, well, in that case, cheers, Kev. Cheers, Esther.
I appreciate you.
You're welcome.
Hey, should we do a podcast? Yep, we've got a big load of Dungeon Master's Guide information. Yes. But we'll save that to the end. Let's start off with some non-D&D stuff. Actually, let's start off with some stuff in that there city known as Ankh-Morpork.
Yeah.
On that there disc world.
It's doing all right, isn't it?
Mmm. It is doing all right. What's the news? I haven't heard. Well, it hit a million dollars on its second day. Woof. Yeah, it is currently well over a million dollars now. It's over a million pounds, so it's probably about 1.3 million dollars now. And it's got 20 days to go, so it has done incredibly well. Wow, that is like rocket ship level.
It's shy of 7,500 backers, so a goodly amount.
So it launched on Tuesday, like all Kickstarters do. And, yeah, it's only, like, just over three weeks. But, yeah, doing really, really well. It's quite a mouthful, though. Terry Pratchett's Discworld RPG, colon, Adventures in Ankh-Morpork. Doesn't trip off the tongue.
But how search engine optimization terms go...
I guess, but I bet it will just be referred to as the Discworld RPG. Fun, for sure.
That's how I've been talking about it already, in fairness.
Yeah, yeah. So it's going to cost you £50 to pick up the core rulebook and the dice. I don't think you can get the core rulebook without the dice, which is interesting. £100 for this whole Game Masters set, which includes an adventure and a screen and all that sort of stuff. And there's some other bits in between, and there's PDF equivalents and stuff as well.
But yeah, powered by the Narrativian system, their brand new Wolves Light narrative game system, which we went into... Did we go into it last week or the week before? Quite recently, anyway.
Yeah, I think we did, and they did a playthrough as well. So you use all the dice and, yeah, I think we were worried about balance and things. We were like, maybe they'll be in water and there wasn't, but there was.
Yeah, well.
Because the GM decides which dice you roll, which can be a D4 to a D12. And then, yeah, if you roll higher than the GM, you're successful.
Yes. That's it. Yeah. Yeah, because... It'll work. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I imagine that the... No, thinking about it, no. Because I was going to say, imagine in the core rulebook it will have a list of basic difficulties for different things. And it'll say, right, this one is a D8, this one's a D4. But it's not because you... No.
Yeah, because you choose the dice you use based on how well you link your trait to the action.
I imagine a significant chunk of this book is going to be about ways to run the game.
Yeah. And it's like just a law book as well. Just describing them.
100%.
Like, yeah, there's a lot to cover. So that's going to be a huge amount of value. But yeah, it's just like ways to make sure it runs and ways to make sure you deviate from traditional gaming. Because try and run this in a trap game. I mean, you could try. You could try.
So I think this is very much like a collector's edition, so it is going to be for all sorts of different people. And I also feel it's going to be a bit of a beer and pretzels vibe sort of game, because I think if you want a really crunchy, in-depth system, you're not going to get it from this. But it's very clear about what it is.
And also, I think it's a really nice game for casual players that don't play tabletop RPGs, because... If people are fans of the Discworld and you say, hey, we're playing a Discworld game, this might be the right thing for them to jump in and give it a try.
And the dice rolls aren't complicated and they'll know the world and they'll probably just have fun sitting there getting to walk around the Discworld a bit. So that's where it sits in my mind.
They specifically said it's designed for one shots as well. Yes. Very specifically. All right.
Are you two picking up a copy of it?
I've backed it, yeah, yeah.
You have? Oh. I don't think this one is one I'm going to get because I just don't know when I would run it. I think I'd like to play it. So if you're running a game, let me know.
I think it's basically going to be like a coffee table Discworld book as well, which I think would just be fun to read and browse through. Yeah. That's the main reason I backed it. I mean, you know, since we've basically seen the rules, we know the rules.
Yeah.
And to be honest, I know the Discworld setting reasonably well, so I'll probably just run it now, to be honest.
I mean, you could.
I think it would be a nice product. Yeah.
And you get some dice.
And you get some dice, yes. Where is it being published? Where is it being published? Yeah, yeah. Has it been published in the UK?
Yeah, because it's in Great British Pound.
It's Modiphius, isn't it? Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, I don't know where it's being printed. I don't know how much shipping is because that can be a different question.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Anyway, yeah, good on them. Good on them. Yeah. And people say that things that aren't D&D don't sell.
Things that aren't D&D and don't have a license.
But bear in mind, a million dollars is a lot of money to us. It's not a lot of money to Wizards of the Coast.
Or maybe it's the Discworld's brand.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, less than a thousand. So arguably, I mean, to be fair, it certainly does, but arguably it should be doing even better.
Well, the rule of thumb generally is what you do in your first day is like a third of what you'll do. Yeah. I think that's changed a little bit with the way people have gotten much better at pre-loading Kickstarters these days.
Yeah.
They really know how to do a big launch. So it skews it a little bit more towards the beginning, and you don't quite get that full U-shape anymore. You get a reverse J instead. Yeah. Because of that front skewing. But, yeah, so I reckon it might do two.
Yeah.
A few million.
Yeah. Well, that would be about 15,000 people. Maybe, yeah. Based on what it's currently doing, which is about 7,500 people. Yeah, yeah. We shall see.
I'm just thinking, though, isn't a reverse J a capital L?
No, because it curves and goes up again, and the L just is straight.
Depends what font you use, I guess.
I can't think of any Ls where it curves up.
Comic Sans. Okay.
Or any Js that don't. No.
Comic Sans. You know what? That's fine. No problem. Look, I didn't say it wasn't good. Jess woke up this morning and chose violence.
I really did. I really did. I'm like, I'm tired, but not tired enough to not be chaotic, which is perfect for a podcast host.
Yes. So on Wednesday nights, I am currently in a game of, is it Vasen? V-A-E-S-E-N.
I say Vasen, but I don't know if I'm saying it wrong.
Okay. Well, that is the game I'm currently in a game of.
Okay.
By three leagues. Yes. So the original Vasen slash Vasen was set in Sweden. Yes. Sort of like late 18th century Sweden with lots of folklore and stuff. Then they pulled out one set in the British Isles, which I don't have, but I definitely want.
I has yeah you can borrow it wait thank you you're welcome I'm not using it right now you can borrow it so they did one set in the British Isles and now they are bringing out versions set in Prague well Central and Eastern Europe including Prague it says nice nice
So this brings in mythic monsters such as Baba Yaga, vampires, because we're talking like Prague, Ukraine, Transylvania and stuff like that, written by Polish and Ukrainian writers.
That's interesting. I mean, if you're saying Prague to me, I'm thinking Gollum or Gollum, depending on how you want to say it. Gollum as in Lord of the Rings Gollum?
No, it's like a stone golem, do you mean?
Or like a clay? Clay. Clay, technically. But yeah, it's like, you know, words in the head. Sorry, like, obviously at the top of my instance, we're just talking about Pratchett and so forth. So, you know.
Yeah. Maybe it's in there.
A frog defending the Jews there with a golem. Or golem. Yeah. Yeah, sorry.
I'm quite enjoying this game of facing that I'm playing, Vassen, whatever it's called. Let's go with Vassen. Whether it's right or wrong, let's go with Vassen. The game of Vassen I'm playing, I do want to play one set in the British Isles, but that's not all they're bringing out.
They also are bringing out another one set in, well, this one's set in Stockholm, so it goes back more to its roots, but this is called City of My Nightmares. It's a full-length campaign, which also includes a starter set.
Oh, okay.
You know, with character sheets, dice, a short version of the rules sort of thing. And an intro adventure called... Called... The Haunting of Castle.
Gil and Crutes or Yeel and Crutes?
Gil and Crutes. Gil and Crutes. Jake Gyllenhaal. I don't know.
But Gyllenhaal is the westernised version, but it's meant to be Yeel and Helen, so I don't know if it's just like Yeel and Crutes.
I don't know. I really don't know.
Where is it based? What part of the world?
Stockholm. Oh, yeah, I don't know how that pronunciation... G-Y-L-L-E-N-C-R-E-U-T-Z. Gynonkreutz. I'm saying Gynonkreutz. It's probably wrong. Yeah, why not?
I mean, that would be the British way of pronouncing that word.
Hmm. I don't know.
So let's just do the British thing and take something foreign and make it our own and interpret it through our lens. That's a very British thing to do.
It is a bit, isn't it?
Ha ha ha!
Okay. Commentary. Social commentary. You should be writing a Terry Pratchett book.
Oh, well, yeah, my writing skills are fantastic, as you know.
Anyway, that does sound very exciting. A lot of different things going on there. It does sound like a great way to get into playing Basin. Basin.
That game is on my list of things to run. I have a lot of books and things, so I'm probably not going to pick these up because I need to get through what I've got already. But I really like it because, I mean, having played it, I assume it feels a bit investigative with, like, it's not just, like, go kill the monster.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it's totally that, yeah. Like, the adventure that we just finished... I don't think we had a single fight in it. We investigated, solved how to deal with the problem and did so. But I think someone pushed someone over once or something to get through a door or something like that. But other than that, there was no combat in that adventure.
And I'm sure sometimes combat is one of the solutions, I'm sure. But it's not the only solution.
Yeah. So it's very investigative. Very much so, yeah. It's basically there's a monster doing something somewhere. Go and investigate what the monster is. Figure out how to solve the situation and then do so.
Pretty much. I like it. That feels interesting to run because I imagine sometimes players will do things that you didn't think as a solution. But you're like, yeah, that works. Yeah, let's do that. And I love it when tables do that because that's always a very cool thing.
Okay. Anyone else want some news? I feel like I've been talking a bit. Hey, do we like Call of Cthulhu?
We do.
I mean, setting like it, original lore, ugh.
Fair, fair.
And that's my answer to your question.
Well, and have we also heard of Dungeons and Dragons in a castle? Yes.
I have heard of this, yes.
There, you can begin to sense where I am heading. How about Call of Cthulhu in a prison? That, yeah.
That, yeah.
Yeah, I have your attention. Marvellous. I shall continue and put this into the thing. Pentridge Prison Tours Topcom in Australia. Sorry, say that again. Super close, obviously. Very convenient. Is looking to put on some games called Cthulhu in a prison. Is this an active prison or is it like an old... Pentridge Prison, yeah.
From the fact that it's being run by the National Trust, I'm going to say it's probably a historic prison.
okay so this isn't like for inmates this is for people to come along and be in a spooky setting and play the game yes great cool because i wasn't sure because i know that ttrpgs are used by a lot of inmates in prison because it's i'm looking at this and you you have to meet at the pentridge prison tours ticket office so i'm guessing it's not an active i'm on board now now i'm understanding where we're going with this i'm here i've arrived thank you
$85.
That's a little different.
That's a lot more accessible.
That's a lot different, yeah. And if that's in Australian dollars as well, because that's a lot... It is Australian. Yeah, so that's a lot less in US dollars or Great British Pounds.
$85.
Yes.
To help make it more accessible to people. Do you know what? If I was in Australia, I'd be up for that.
Yeah, yeah.
You'd have to get to Pintridge Prison, but yeah, I'm delighted for them. 19th of November, 6.15pm to 9.30pm. 19th of November.
That's tomorrow. Can I be there by tomorrow?
November, not October.
Oh, November.
You've got a month.
You could actually. I can get there. I can do it. It might seem less affordable after you factor in plane travel. Accommodation.
Don't care for while you're away.
Think of the opportunities.
It is cool. I do like these events of RPGs in cool locations, because I do think it makes games accessible for some people, because if some people are like, I want to try this, but we don't have a GM, it's nice that there are events to book on. But it is a very luxury thing.
It does look cool. So each game is played inside a prison cell. Interesting. Okay, three hour, one shot Call of Cthulhu adventure. Professional dungeon master, it says, which I think is... That's not what they call them in Call of Cthulhu. Professional keeper, yes.
But if they use Dungeon Master, then people will actually understand.
Well, they might as well just call it a Dungeons & Dragons adventure then, in that case, if that's what they're going for.
Well, I bet loads of people are like, oh, are you playing that Dungeons & Dragons event with Cthulhu? There'll be people that say that, because it's become a... People use the term tabletop RPG and Dungeons & Dragons interchangeably.
I can confirm this is very much the case like yeah especially like we got people walking in and they're like oh I'd like to play some D&D I'm like uh-huh do you have any firm views on which D&D would like to play, oh, I just want to play D&D. If they say, I would like to play 5th edition D&D, here is my character sheet, as I have prepared already.
Oh, yeah, then they're looking for that specific system, yeah.
Yes. But if they're looking to play, quote, D&D, unquote, I'm like, oh, well, please. What flavor of D&D would you like? That sounds like a lot of choice for us. I don't like to confuse people, so I just generally steer them towards the indie table and hope for the best, provided the indie table don't push them towards the D&D tables. But that's a different matter for a different time.
that's us like we're the indie table you are the indie table run some games with people that aren't D&D and I'll get you some players anyway sorry good to know yes yeah so that's great I thought that was very cool and yeah just like a little bit of flavour jolly little thing nice speaking of actually no there's no segway I don't have a segway in a separate piece of news unrelated to what you just said
That's something completely different.
Fighting Fantasy. Classic adventure game books. So they've been away for 20 years, but they are returning in... In the US. In the US, yes. But I'm sure you could order them online and get them posted to any place in the world.
Yeah, Arianne Games has been doing fighting fantasy stuff for multiple players in the style of, I want to say... The Engineer, Port Blacksand, after the bit, for quite some time. Yeah, just saying, like, more recent 1920s. But are you saying there's a reissue of the book?
There is.
Yeah, the original, starting with the Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
Yeah, so Steve Jackson Games is distributing, well, publishing them. But the original Fighting Fantasy series was written by Sir Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson, but it's not the same Steve Jackson. And I didn't realise it wasn't the same Steve Jackson. So when I first saw this, I was like, yeah, of course. And then I was like, oh, a different Steve Jackson.
This is the British Steve Jackson. I have met and interviewed Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson at Dragon Meat a few years ago.
Oh, okay.
Interesting. The Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games also wrote all the fighting fantasy books I hear. Hmm. So that's not confusing in any way.
So I was confused. But anyway.
And of course they found a games workshop as well. Oh, it was the US Steve Jackson.
No, British Steve Jackson, sure. So the British Steve Jackson wrote the books, or co-wrote the books. The US Steve Jackson is now, who runs Steve Jackson Games, GURPS, all that stuff, is now going to publish them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But who found the games workshop? I thought that was British Steve Jackson. Oh, okay. Sorry. I got confused because we're talking about USA's tube chats.
This conversation is like what was happening inside my brain when I was taking on this piece of news originally. So I'm glad it's not just me.
So I've got a question. Who's on first?
Was I sorry?
Anyway, moving on. Not Abbott and Costello fans, I see.
Anyway, there's going to be five books made available in early 2025, and then they're doing another five later that year. But there are like 50 titles in this series, so I imagine the plan is to kind of do all of those if they sell well, which I imagine it will, because since 1982, over 20 million copies of the series were sold, which is quite a lot.
which is pretty good for a series that hasn't also been available for 20 years.
There's also been, well, no, it's been available here in other markets, but it's just not in the US. But there's also been lots of revivals in different formats because there's like mobile apps of the books you can get these days. And yeah, I remember them coming out about four or five years ago, which were kind of cool. I think there was a reissue of the book. No, there was a D&D event.
Oh, this was like 15, 20 years. There's a company producing D&D. This is the D20 boom era. So D20 adventures based on the books as well. This would have been like mid-2000s, I think. Interesting.
If I remember correctly. That'd be about the right time for the D20 explosion, which I always like to think of as like the Cambrian explosion.
Yes.
It's not quite the same.
No, but yes.
I mean, you say that.
And then, of course, we had the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs.
Who were the dinosaurs in this analogy?
D20. The meteorite destroyed the D20. There was a D20 bust, wasn't there? It boomed and boomed and boomed and then the market imploded. Yeah.
Well, people still use a lot of D20s, so, you know, I guess those are the crocodiles in this analogy then.
Or the birds.
Or the birds, yeah.
Crocodiles being big reptiles. We may have... Sorry to be a dinosaur pedant at you.
we may have taken this um a little too far yeah let's start off topic yeah just news that is not related to the dungeon masters guide go for it discord has partnered with roll20 to give away a free adventure and this is part of the 50th anniversary promotions so you can play the adventure directly in discord because discord roll20 has a new integration with discord as an app so that you can use
So yeah, there's a free adventure. You can use the app launcher on Discord to find and launch it. It's called Voyage into Discord. Yeah, and there's also profile effects that are available on Discord and things like that. So it's basically a way to show off how this all works. And it's got a cute wrapper of a baby Displacer Beast or an Owlbear Cub and stuff like that for you on Discord.
But yeah, so it's a Halloween season one. And yeah.
Are there some Discord features? Does it make use of Discord bots and stuff like that?
Yeah.
I'm aware they're there, but I've never actually used them.
I haven't used them, but it's a new thing, so I think part of this is to promote that that works. I know when I used to play online during the pandemic a lot, we used Discord and Roll20. Those were the things we were using, so this would have been really useful then, but I'm mostly trying to play in person these days.
Anyway, let's throw you back to D&D. We could go back to role-playing games. Chris Perkins. Oh, yeah. He has been product lead for official D&D books for coming up to two decades now, at least. Yeah. Yes. Well, he is no longer going to be the product lead for official D&D books. In fact, the Dungeon Master's Guide is the last book that he'll be working on as product lead. Ah, interesting.
He's not leaving the company, apparently. It looks like, and we don't know 100% for sure, but it basically looks like he's moving into a more sort of overall sort of creative role rather than being a product lead on specific books.
So, okay, yeah.
Yeah, it looks like it's kind of a broader job that he's moving into. But yeah, I mean, this is going to be the last one where you'll see him credited as the product lead.
There we go. You don't think he's moving into that new PR role?
No, no, no.
I don't know.
sorry it's just like that would be such a dreadful role for any sort of like classic introverted geek like I'm not saying that he is but it's it's yeah wow people would have some questions for him he's a very well known figure so yeah anyway that would be harsh it was just a thought I don't know these people and their lives and what their career aspirations are and where their strengths lie that's fair sorry I just caught tickled my fantasy hmm
We still don't know who's got that role yet. I assume they're still trying to convince someone to take it.
I have no idea. I have no idea. I imagine someone must be doing it in the interim because they are still putting out social media stuff.
Oh, yeah. Well, there'll be a team of people who, you know, it's not like it was one person that did everything. So there'll be a team covering for stuff. Someone who's quite stressed doing overtime.
Yeah. Anyway, yeah. I'm not supposed to be it. You know, he's moving up, I guess. I guess he's moving up to a broader sort of more overseeing role over D&D. I'm guessing. I don't know for sure. I'm guessing. Yeah.
would you like to hear about an exciting zine or if you're us zine zine yes yes bless your heart yeah uh weird science link soon to be available in the show notes um is a ttrpg magazine or zine or zine depending on how you wish to say it it's got over 112 pages of interviews news and features all about various forms of gaming uh it does seem a little bit focused on osr sort of
But they also have some other things as well, yeah. That's available on DriveThruRPG for a princely total of $7.85. There we go. So, yeah. It looks like a quality bundle, so I thought I'd throw that in there for people.
Weird Science. W-Y-R-D, yeah. Yes. Not like the 80s movie. Oh, with Kelly Brock.
That'd be something very different. Yeah.
That would be very, very different.
And again, once more, listeners are not getting the entertainment that I am from this podcast, which is sadly an audio-only media, as I cannot see the faces and the reflective looks that have passed across my co-host's faces.
Well, anyway. Anyway.
Moving swiftly on. Have we finished? Okay. I think that's it. No. Have you got some more? No, I've got more.
I'm not done.
There's more. More. Give us more.
Well, there's something you should know about, Russ. So Monstrous Mastery 2, we're planning on bringing to the Kickstarter this wintertime. And the introductory chapter is out. We've put that out for people to have a look at.
Interesting. 11 pages, basically.
Yes, but it gives you some info and information about what the tools are going to have. Because obviously it has all the stuff in the first one, like legends, lore, science, behaviour, encounters, treasure and stuff. But all the new stuff as well, because there's horde monsters and heroic monsters and things like that. Loads of stuff going on. So yeah, it gives you a preview of that.
So I thought if people were interested, you can download that chapter and have a look.
I'm looking forward to this cutting edge in...
uh in the monster game side yeah what we should do actually a bit closer time is probably get our cf pools available to come on and talk about it yeah yeah so we'll talk more about it then maybe i've already i have already uh suggested it to him and he has answered in the affirmative all right so we'll do that sometime but for now yeah the introductory chapter is out just to give you a little uh and the pre-launch page is up so you can click yeah and follow yeah i mean basically but yeah it's good good
Yeah, it's basically, you know, some introductory chapter in the other one tells you how to read a monster stat block and all that sort of stuff. But it also tells you about some of the new stuff. So like you just said, the horde monsters, heroic monsters, and the ones which we can level up with you, whether they be foe or ally.
So that could either be a companion or a familiar, or it could be sort of like the kobold that you defeated keeps coming back.
Oh, Cobalt Nemesis. That's an excellent name for a band.
Yeah.
I should start one.
And also some of the little tiny, tiny tweaks we've been making as well. I mean, and I'm not going to lie. Some of these were inspired by the new D&D stat block, which was not a bad pick. So one of them was the new D&D stat block has initiative pre-calculated for you.
now obviously in level up you can't really do that because anything can be an initiative role but what we've done is we've taken what we think is the three most common things that will be initiative roles which is a dexterity check a wisdom perception check or wisdom insight check and the most three common ones and we've just put an initiative line just with those three on there and the average score so you don't even have to roll them you can just use them straight out yeah and i've actually been using that because it just
saves me rolling dice i'm very lazy yeah yeah so sometimes i'm like yeah so we'll see like plus two brackets 12 for example yeah or if it's got advantage like i tend to give like the really crunchy monsters advantage on their initiative checks because it'd be a shame if they didn't get back yeah and sometimes i give the more lowly mooks disadvantage so it spreads it out a bit
and there's nice distribution with players going ahead of some monsters and behind others yeah it's kind of fun um yeah so what else we do in the saving throw line instead of just the ones that you're proficient in the monsters proficient in them including all of them just so it's there at a glance rather than you having to look at it realize that it's not there then look at the ability score which is admittedly a microsecond but every tiny little thing you can do just to reduce doesn't it
optimize the game it does help yeah I mean I know like I was using on Wednesday a Hydra that is already a legendary monster I decided to make it an elite to make it a satisfying challenge for my gang boy wow they were like They were, like, chewing on it. It's like, I don't know if listeners are familiar with what happens when you give a dog a chew toy, but it was a very similar sort of thing.
They were, like, really, really getting their teeth into it. And it lasted a good three, four, five rounds. One monster versus five players at number six. So, elites. Worth it. And that's, I mean, at conventions, I don't know about the rest of you, but, like, My feedback has been people like to tell me about how good Monstrous Menagerie is. I'm like, yeah, I know.
And they're like, oh, that's just ridiculous. I believe it's one of your best-selling books, is it not? It is, yeah. It's our best-selling book, yeah.
I'd have to run the numbers, but it's definitely up there.
Yeah, it is definitely our best-selling one. There you go. By how much, we don't know, but I would be interested to know what the numbers are. If you felt comfortable giving it.
Well, it was the one we needed to reprint first, so... Yes, which is like that.
Let us seamlessly segue from the monstrous menagerie to a new backer kit crowdfunding exercise that is out. It is... The Slayer's Survival Kit and Hunter's Journal, which is, of course, very topical for the season leading up to the 31st of October. It's two new books for the Monster of the Week system.
Oh, nice. I like Monster of the Week.
Yeah, yeah. Powered by the apocalypse. It's from Evil Hat. It's got 28 days left. Has on Friday the 18th of October and has currently smashed its 50k USD goal with
basically 86 000 so yeah good job good job um that's gonna be a lot of very nice books got some lovely artwork on it like um on the covers um got nine new hunter playbooks nine new team playbooks new weird moves gear asset and um plenty of advice for uh All 33 official Hunter playbooks. So if you like Monsters of the Week, then this could be a very good choice.
They also have some rather nice zinc alloy dice, which I think are quite charming. I imagine they smell quite nice.
Well, there we go, yeah. I don't have anything to add on that. It looks like it's exactly what you expect it and want it to be. It's very clear what it is and what you use. Nice. The case books for investigators look nice as well, the little notebooks.
We posted a review of the Player's Handbook today. You might think, wait, wait, didn't you do that a month ago? And the answer is yes. We also posted a review of the Player's Handbook a month ago. So originally we had a sort of first impressions review up a month ago. We now have from Beth Rimmel. So now the book's been out a month and it's been plenty of time to properly...
got her teeth into it and things like that. A proper deep dive review, which went up today. So if you're looking for like a really, really crunchy review that really goes into the book, this is the one. This isn't like, you know, someone got the book, flipped through it and then whacked a quick first impressions review up. This is a really in-depth one.
This is Beth Rimmel's like, you know, got her scuba gear on and gone for a real deep dive. Yeah.
Exactly.
That sounds pretty good.
Yeah. Right. I think we're probably out of news up until the DMGs.
Malek the Maleficent here. If, like me, you're enjoying this podcast, please consider subscribing on Patreon for exclusive bonus content every week and the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing you are helping to keep the show going. Subscribe at patreon.com slash Morris. The things I do. All right, all right. Don't forget patreon.com slash Morris. Can I go now?
The Dungeon Master's Guide. On the horizon. It is coming very, very soon. It is coming on November the 12th. If in mainstream retail and two weeks earlier than that, which would be October.
End of October, yeah.
Yeah. So two weeks away, less than two weeks away. Yeah. In US local game stores.
Mm-hmm.
So it's very, very close. And as last week and the week before, Wizards have been putting out videos and information and lots. Basically, the whole publicity machine is in full drive. Yes. So basically, we've got this week's DMG update, I guess this is. And this is going to happen every week until it comes out, pretty much. Okay. Where even to start this so much? So there was a press event. Yes.
It was over a week ago, but it was... a week and a half ago. It was embargoed until I think it was Tuesday or Monday or something like that. But there was a press event. Christian and Beth from Ian were both in attendance at this press event. And they kind of went into a fairly sort of like large overview of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Yes.
So we've got a number of sort of videos to dive into about specific aspects. Mm-hmm. But what we also have is kind of quite a big sort of broad overview, which Wizards of the Coast presented, Chris Perkins and James Wyatt presented at this press event. Mm-hmm.
so where to start with this so they started by talking about the sort of overall design goal of the book okay one of the key things that they wanted to say was that creating an adventure for home use doesn't have to be a whole load of work and in order to help with that they've tightened up encounter creation
Right. This is very nuts and bolts stuff. And I am super keen on this because... But I have said frequently that D&D 5th edition is unnecessarily hard to run. Especially if you're a new GM who does not have any practice. It is just a pain. So... If they're making encounter creation easier today, a lot of the rest of the game is actually a lot simpler. Yes.
Yeah.
So tell me, what do we know about this, Russ? What do we know?
Well, we don't know specifically. They didn't delve into the actual numbers or anything like that. So I couldn't tell you that. All they've said is they've tightened up combat encounter creation to assist with the goal of making an adventure for home use easy. They're not allowed to work. So what that actually means in terms of the actual numbers, we don't necessarily know.
Yeah. This is their design goal.
Their design goal, yeah. I mean, they've also got, like, the DMG has five sample adventures, and they're not big, they're like half a page to one page. They're little adventures. Little adventures. Just to show, they're kind of just to sort of show DMs how... you know, how easy it can be given the right tools to come up with a, you know, adventure for the evening. Yeah. So it has that. Yeah.
But it's also, you know, it's not just sort of like telling you what to do, but it's also like showing you what an adventure sort of looks like, how easy it can be to put it together. So, you know, you could spend a load of time prepping an adventure. You don't have to. And you can put together a one shot, they say, in like an hour or two quite easily. Yeah.
All right. I mean, that's going to be a fairly good one-shot. I suppose when you're starting off, can I have one?
That's certainly longer than I generally spend putting together a one-shot.
How long do they stay on there?
An hour or two.
That's all right. But then I think that's experience, isn't it? Because I think you two have been running... For me, it's a minute or two. Well, you two have been running games for so much longer, you've probably encountered...
situations like this before so you've all that experience to draw on whereas for me i'm trying to you know think i'm trying to get everything together and think about it so it depends what depends what tools you have like i i presume russ is talking about i presume we're talking specifically dnd and acceptable variations thereof and it's going to depend what tools you have available um so that's and how much customization you want to throw in yeah
So, you know, with off-the-shelf bits, yeah, like, you could probably knock something fairly decent together in, like, 20 minutes. In terms of things like plot and flavour, reading books is, like, super helpful.
Oh, yeah, you just nick plots and characters.
I had a one-shot, which I had to do unexpectedly. And I basically stole the plot from Shadowslinger, the second Black Company book that I set up for that. And my players were like, ah, this is such an amazing idea. Wow, that's so creepy and cool. I'm like, yeah.
interesting the only issue with that is if your players consume the same media that you do because i did i did that with a zombie campaign it was quite sad planned it and it was quite sandboxy and i've consumed a lot of zombie media because you know that's who i am as a person and a lot of things that i started to throw seeds in the person was like oh this one reminds me of this and i was like okay thanks
And it just so happened we happen to have a big overlap in the media that we're consuming.
So that's a hindrance of plots. But with NPCs, that's actually a secret bonus. Because basically, if you're nicking an NPC from a TV show that the players are vaguely familiar with, at least, they will subconsciously fill in the gaps and it will feel like a much more rounded character than it actually is.
Oh, that's really good. I like that.
Yeah. And it works really, really well. It's like a really stupid example. You just whack Clint Eastwood and you just have this sort of stranger talking in a slightly Clint Eastwood-y voice and acting a bit Clint Eastwood-y. They'll put in the gaps because they know who Clint Eastwood is. It probably depends how old they are, I guess. But, you know, people my age would know who Clint Eastwood is.
They'll make the orc with no name.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, it's archetypes in a way, I suppose. Using archetypes they're familiar with, but the archetypes are ones that you've stolen from TV.
Yeah, I mean, and stealing from related stuff, like one thing that an old Jim of mine did, which I thought was very clever, and which it was like, it was an itch in my brain for ages, because we were playing like a vampire game, not using the vampire mastery system, and it's like the enemy, like the big bad evil guy, created a storm of crows that ripped the enemies apart.
And I'm like, I know this. Where is it from? Where is it from? And eventually I realized, oh, Danabd at 40k, it's the unkindness, which is Robot Brakens. But such a strong image that you could take it from a different genre.
clonk it right into the vampire and it fit perfectly and it's only because like I read like a whale just scooping up books with my big old yeah I'm really glad you explained the metaphor because I was like I don't know whales read a lot like I didn't but you know Consuming books.
When you explained it, I got on board with the metaphor. It made sense. I did need the context.
Yes, we're not talking soggy books.
It's like those toddler books you get that are waterproof.
Right, yeah. They need to be. Yeah, yeah.
sorry i feel we're getting off topic yeah so the dmg has loads of so whilst i'll segue in so those are some ideas for like advice for campaigns and it seems like the dmg is really going for it with advice for and structure for new gms would you agree yeah so so you asked about this earlier
And I think last week, and we weren't able to answer last week, but now we are, like, what sort of advice does the DMG have? And last week we were like, I'm sure it has some, but we don't know. Yes.
What a great news podcast.
This week, we can tell you what advice it has. Tell them all. Okay. So, it's front-loaded with all the advice. So, that's all in the beginning. So, the first and second chapters. So, the first chapter is kind of like an overview. So, it's got the following sections. Like, what does a DM do?
Mm-hmm.
Things you need. Preparing a session. How to run a session. Every DM is unique. Ensuring fun for all. So that's the sections in the first chapter.
In the first chapter, when this is preparing for it, does it include have a little cry?
Probably.
Good.
It wouldn't surprise me. It might be session two.
Yes.
And then we've got chapter two, which goes into some of the more sort of nitty gritty stuff. So it's got stuff like meeting player tastes and group sizes, having multiple DMs, resolving actions, character advancement, talking about the three pillars of D&D, that sort of thing. Okay. So there's something interesting they did with this advice. They ran it all past a bunch of celebrity DMs.
Oh, cool. So I'm guessing like Matt Mercer's in that group.
Matt Mercer, Deborah Ann, well, people like that. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. Target audience. Yeah. Well, that's also, you know, a sensible thing to do because that means those people will talk about it.
And also just breaking away from the 2014 edition where they asked some particular kinds of people who had definite opinions, which are maybe not as mainstream as one would imagine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I'm looking at a table right now. So I'm looking at part of the first chapter, and it's got stuff about the tiers of play, local heroes, heroes of the realm, that stuff. Yes. And it's also got a table called Adventure Situations, one for each tier. So it's 1D20 for each tier. So there's a level 1 to 4 table and a level 5 to 10 table. And then each of them is just kind of a plot hook.
So 20 random plot hooks, one for each tier.
Yeah, I mean, is this not like... Surely they've got this in the 2014 DMG. This is like super standard stuff.
I don't know if I understand. I like this about organisation, though. And this is what I'm getting the sense of, is that this book is organised better for a new DM. The stuff is where you need it to be. Nice. Not scattered about. That's the kind of way I feel it's looking.
I did find the 2014 DMG to be quite inaccessible yeah it's yeah it's yeah yeah i don't think it's organized especially well yeah i don't like i don't like to think myself as a stupid person yeah yeah no it's got the magic items yeah
uh yeah like different different maneuvers but it was just like it felt very bitty like a big book of appendices like yeah we've got no space for this in the main book so we'll stick it in here this feels like it's a lot more polished which is nice it's the sense i'm getting it's the sense i'm getting yeah so then we move into chapter three so this is like um dm toolbox we talked about last week so if people want to hear more about that they can listen to last week's um
last week's episode yeah last week's episode because we went into quite a lot of detail about but that's the dm toolbox which has all the different sort of like bits of rules that you might need doors firearms explosives traps fear mental stress poisons yeah all that stuff the a to t of dungeon design yeah Yeah. Yeah. And this is like alphabetical. So they do this twice in this book.
They've got an alphabetical toolbox of rules. They've also got a alphabetical law glossary later in the book, which is like D&D law.
Oh, okay. Okay. Interesting.
Yeah, which I don't think that was really in the prequels. I mean, there was bits of lore scattered around.
You had pantheons and so forth, but they weren't particularly privileging one set of lore over another. Yeah, so it depends which lore they're going with. I suspect Forgotten Realms, or is it General D&D?
Well, we're going to get into this in a bit, but there's a big emphasis on Greyhawk in this. I think the lore section is pretty much everything. So I think if you look at it, it will tell you what Dragonlance is, it will tell you what Greyhawk is, you know, that sort of thing.
I think this is really smart to put in there because I think this book is really done to welcome new people and it's not assuming that you know anything about it. And it's giving you enough information where you can jump in and not feel Like you're lost in the old boys club.
Because I know sometimes jumping in to run games of D&D and when you join a community, if you don't know all the lore, you can feel really outstaffed with things.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're also useful. Yeah, I mean, also it can be quite fun to discover stuff in-game. Back in the day, we always said it's hard to fizzrep ignorance. You can pretend that you don't know something, but if you actually know it, then... But if you actually don't know it... This is the DM, though.
The players can discover it in-game, but the DM... Well, that's how I felt as a DM.
I was hesitant to run things, so I don't want to bump into some lore that my players know about and do it wrong, as I know is an odd way to say, because in...
I'd never run up and got an Elms Adventure because I don't know it well enough and other people will know it better than I do.
Exactly that.
I think we talked about established settings many times.
I don't care.
Fair. But anyway, Russ.
Yeah, anyway. There's also a whole lot of stock maps in there. They're black and white maps. And they said they chose that style deliberately, sort of like pencil style black and white maps.
Yeah.
Because they're examples and they want GMs to look at it and think, oh, I can draw maps as well. Yeah. Rather than really high quality. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's a good idea, actually. I think that, you know, it looks pencil and paper like on graph paper almost. It's on a gridded paper. And I think that's a good idea. So, yeah, and there's a bunch of those.
There's like an appendix full of those, a bunch of generic maps. You can use them or they're just inspiration saying, look how easy it is to make a map sort of thing. And, of course, we've got the wire referred to as a monster manual, a little monster manual with traps. The trap section has a whole bunch of – I mean, I think the original DMG had a dozen or so, I think.
It wasn't that many. Yeah, yeah. It was like concepts, but it wasn't – yeah. Not great and still very much marred in the traps as a hit point packs. Or like a deus ex machina. Oh, well, are you not immune to dual failure saves? Well, shame.
I can't tell you anything about the design of the traps, unfortunately.
No, no, no. Well, it's also the design philosophy that surrounds them.
Yes, how to use them. How to use traps, yeah.
they've got a high hurdle to clear. I would say with me personally, if they're going to convince me that they can do a better job than Paul Hughes, who, yeah, as I say, really nailed it in a way which I found very convincing.
Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, and so what else have we got? We've got tracking sheets. These will also be available for free on D&D Beyond, but they're in the book.
Oh, we've seen those before, haven't we? Yeah.
Yeah, the ones with the cutesy artwork for NPCs, bastions, magic items, things like that. So there's a bunch of those sheets in there. What else have we got? Greyhawk, the chapter on Greyhawk, which we'll go into a little later because they put out a whole video about that. And the short adventures are all set in Greyhawk as well.
Mm-hmm.
That chapter with the short adventures. It's all set in Greyhawk as well. So that's that. Magic and treasure. We kind of went into that last week as well. It was a big old chapter, about 100 pages long of magic items and treasure.
Mm-hmm.
they say they've tightened up every magic item. I don't know what that means exactly, but I guess just every magic item. Yeah. Basically make more fun and eliminate confusion was basically the goal there. Fair enough. Reasonable, I guess. And rules for creating your own magic items as well, which we already kind of knew about and talked about last week.
Well, those are more customizing existing magic items, weren't they?
No, there's the crafting rules, wasn't there?
Well, yeah, that's, I'm quibbling over what counts as new, so ignore me. Sorry, I do beg your pardon. I don't know what came over me with this, unless they're a type of pedantry, but yeah.
Yeah, all right. Chapter 8, Bastions, which, again, we talked about last week or the week before, went into quite a bit of detail about, so we don't really need to do that again. Basically, you get a Bastion at level 5, and you can just put facilities in it, which, you know, might be like a lab or a pub or a whatever. Yeah, very XCOM. It upgrades players. Yeah, it's XCOM. Yeah, it's XCOM.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you played XCOM, Bastions are XCOM.
Ah.
Why didn't I think of that? That's an excellent metaphor. Bastions of Hexagon.
I refer to the Firaxis games. I don't know about the original games. Apologies to listeners if that's causing you conniptions. Oh, Jess, you were saying?
No, I said that's why we're a team of people. No one person has all the knowledge. We have metaphors between us.
I saw.
Okay.
Then we've got the Law of Index and the Appendix, which we made... You know, I talked about earlier, I don't know what exactly is in it, but apparently Wyatt's daughters were some of the test cases to help them detect what should be in there and what shouldn't. You know, what players might take for granted or what a sort of veteran might take for granted, which a player might not necessarily know.
That sort of thing is in there. Mm-hmm. They also mention, like, if something's not in the lore index, it's covered somewhere else. Because the example they used was Asmodeus. Isn't in the lore glossary, but he is in the cosmology section.
Okay.
I would have put a reference to him in the lore glossary as well. I don't know.
Maybe there's an index at the back, so if you were... Yeah, fair enough. Indexes are very hard to make. Sorry, just popped in my head. Back on. Anything else from the DMG?
That's kind of it. There's a mini-adventure that is going to be coming called Scions of Elemental Evil, Greyhawk-themed. It features the cartoon kids, the D&D cartoon kids, levelled up to fourth level, and that'll also be on D&D Beyond at some point. Ooh. But yeah, that's the overview. That's kind of the broad overview of it.
And we can go into details on various things now, but that's kind of the broad overview. Especially a book designed as a toolbox for newer DMs.
Yeah, well, as we said, this is the design goal. They want to make encounters easier to run. They want to make it less unnecessarily difficult to run. Which, yeah, I'm like... Anything that will make games easier to run, I'm sort of in favour of.
Yeah, if it helps make games happen, let's do it.
I don't think my knowledge is perfect. I'm always looking to improve my skills, sharpen my sword, as they say. But if they've got some good ideas, I'll be having them. Yoink, away!
Yeah, so shall we look at a few things in a little more detail then? I mean, Greyhawk is the big topic this week. but let's start with something smaller the adventuring day yes I heard it had ceased to exist kind of so originally the recommendation was six to eight encounters a day yeah six to eight medium encounters per day that feels too much for me
and also six straight medium encounters per day Jess it's like why did you even bother getting your sword out for some of them yeah yeah because it's just like it just the amount of time it takes to roll initiative it's like oh so you could do more encounters of a higher higher like difficulty I recall there was a point system wasn't there
Medium encounters, easy encounters, hard encounters, different points, and you had a number of points worth of encounters per adventuring day, if I remember the 2014 one correctly.
Well, it's the same as the level-up version. There was easy, medium, hard, and deadly were the things. So I think they've changed that now, haven't they? Because that was not perfectly clear. Yeah. Because a deadly encounter, right, means that the party has to expend significant resources or someone might die. I'm like, I guess that is technically deadly, but... Someone may die.
Well, this is how these work. They're kind of quite basic. So the DM determines an XP budget, experience point budget, based on low, moderate, or high.
Yes.
based on how difficult they're aiming for, and the level of the characters in the party. Yeah. They spend that budget on creatures to craft an encounter. Right. There is no multiplier based on the number of creatures or the number of party members. That was always... Just a bit of advice saying that... Dreadfully unclear. Yeah.
Adding extra creatures or party members can make for more complications, but I think it basically assumes a standard party size and a sort of equalish number of creatures, I guess. Oh! I don't know that bit for sure. They're not doing well here, but okay, crack on.
Then, but they don't have any mention of the term adventuring day, and nor do they say how many encounters you should have in between long rests.
Yeah.
There's no reference to that at all. It's sort of like 2014 has the six to eight medium encounters thing. Yeah. This one goes to an approach where it talks about encounter place and talks about frequent short rests. Because there has been a shift in recent D&D books towards short rests, hasn't there? Yeah.
Yeah. Well, realistically, like, and this may be dreadfully unpopular with people who like to say how declarative I am, but my experience is, right, is, like, you probably only want about one long rest maybe every couple of sessions, because if you're doing a lot of fighting, taking short rests often just as good, and it lets classes like fighters, adepts, sorry, monks, um,
Thank you for the thumbs up there. Warlocks, like, have a point, because all their abilities recharge on short rest. If you don't throw short rest in there, they don't get to do anything. They're like, oh, I used my abilities.
The other thing about short rest as opposed to long rest is that short rest use resources, hit price and things like that. As long rest don't. Long rest, like, reset. You know. And they're like, respawn, we're good. Yeah, sort of thing. Whereas short rest are using resources. Yeah, yeah. They have a different place in the adventuring day. Very much so, yeah. Yeah.
So, yeah, so the adventuring day's gone, basically, is the sort of, like, top-level takeaway from that. It just talks about encounter pace instead. Yeah. Sort of more simple rules for designing encounters.
That makes sense to me, because I don't ever feel, in my experience, that the DM drove when rest happens. It was like the party, like, oh, I feel like we really need a rest at this point, and they would do that in the narrative. The DM wouldn't be like, okay.
Well, that's the 15-minute adventuring day that people talk about, isn't it? It's the adventure for 15 minutes, then you take a long rest.
well except obviously as rules was written you may take one long rest every 24 hours well yes it's an exaggeration but I was wondering if maybe Jess was talking about short rests because plotty's taking short rests does seem like a good way yeah okay
I'm in both because generally the party has said, like, we'll get to a point and be like, I think we're kind of done for the day and done with things we want to do. And then as the GM, we can be like, yeah, it's early evening. So you could settle in and make a camp and get ready to rest for the evening and, you know, all that stuff. So you can react in that way.
An excellent opportunity to segue into maybe a role play.
obsession around the campfire absolutely for me the long rest and campfire things in a campaign is absolutely the time when people get to you know have that there's some situations where a long rest isn't appropriate either what if you're right in the middle of a dungeon If it's not a safe area to rest and set up camp, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I guess a classic example from Lord of the Rings would be when they're sat around a well and thinking, oh, this would be a good place to have a rest in the Minds of Moria. And then certain fools of a tuck knock stuff down and make a racket. Fools of a tuck. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And they're saying, should we shut the doors and ram some wedges under and then kind of like, no, don't do that. That's how you end up dead. Those are good films. Those are such good films. Yeah, yeah. Strong films. But yeah, that would be a good example, but it wouldn't make sense. Originally,
old school D&D the idea was you'd have your base camp sort of like a village and a dungeon outside and you'd have to go back to the village in between excursions to the dungeon and that was your equivalent of long rest yeah yeah that makes sense because you go to a safe place to rest because if I'm in the middle of an unsafe area I'm not going to have a nap
And then you've got things like I can't remember if it's called The Dome of Resting The Dome of Resting I know what you mean It's not called Tiny Hut Or Magic Hut or something like that Similar vibe Liam and Tiny Hut I can't remember who it belonged to Old Leo Now I know You throw that up After a 10 minute ritual class And then you can camp a little It's just, yeah. It does make it harder to GM.
Yeah.
I mean, what we did in Level Up was we introduced the concept of havens. Yeah. So while you can have a long rest, if it's not a haven, it's not as useful. And a haven specifically defined as somewhere safe where you can have a nice rest without any fear of the elements or any fear of being attacked. You know, somewhere probably haven-ish, I guess.
An inn or your home or somewhere like that.
Yeah, my rule of thumb is if you have to put a watch on, not a watch, a watch, a stand guard. If someone has a stand guard, it's not a haven. I don't think that's a rule of thumb. I think that's just the rules.
Oh, yeah. Even better than a rule of thumb. You don't need to do it as a rule of six. You've got the actual rules. They say that. It's probably a rule that I wrote. I probably came up with that. Yeah.
Glad to be here to remind you. It was three years ago. I can't remember what I wrote.
Okay. So the adventuring day is done. Recommendations of six to eight encounters per day is gone. It's, yeah. Okay.
I mean, that was always an example. D&D is a game of resource management in many respects. If you're going to engage with the rules, you can do it. You can treat it differently. That's absolutely fine. I do not care how you run your games, but I can say what the game is about. It's about managing resources. Yeah.
It sounds like they're taking steps towards it, but I'm going to need to see some details because it does still feel quite complicated. I don't know how... I mean, it is the same game, isn't it?
It's not going to change that much. It is the same game. It's just different advice. I mean, it is D&D 5e, you know. It's not an entirely new game.
No, not entirely new. I don't know. It feels like a 6th edition because they've had some changes to the player-facing cycle.
yeah I think I would because like so many of the spells have changed it is 5.5 in my mind absolutely and everyone I speak to thinks that as well I just think not calling it that is going to cause confusion down the road for people bringing the wrong books and wrong versions of the rules to tables and especially with newer players
Yeah. Well, we know the marketing reasons why it's referred to as it is. But anyway, that's a side. We've been into that a million times.
Should we talk about Greyhawk then?
Before we do that, because Greyhawk's a slightly bigger topic. Custom backgrounds.
Okay. Fair enough. Carry on.
So the DMD contains the rules for creating custom backgrounds.
What are those rules for us?
Okay. I mean, basically, just make it up.
Yeah, I mean, they used to be in the PHB previously, so it sounds like they've changed the mode.
Yeah, so what you do is you choose three abilities.
Mm-hmm.
Strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma. You choose a feat. You choose from the origin category. The feat has to be an origin feat, not any feat.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right. That's it. That's your custom background. But at that point, I kind of feel like, what's the point of making the background? Why not just include in the rules? Everybody just does those things. Yeah. And describe your background how you want.
For certain people, it's really important to have the flavour attached. The flavour... The name of the rules package is super important. So, like, for me, if I want to play, like, a roguish thief character, I'm like, you know what would do this much better? Rangers. That would do what I want it to do a lot better, thanks. Then I'll play a ranger and just say, well, I'm a thief.
What are you going to do about it? But for other people, it's like, no, no, my character has taken a thief-like turn, so I now must take a class in Rogue to reflect this. I'm like, yeah, sure, you can do that. Why not? But it just feels a bit like you're making your character less good at what they do, generally. Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's fine if you want to do that. It's just like, I don't see the need for it myself. You can just roleplay it as part of this roleplaying game, in my opinion.
I don't know. I feel like these background rules are so freeform as to just...
Maybe that's why it's moved to the DMG, because it needs to be at the Dungeon Master's discretion. So a player can't just do whatever. They need to come to their DM and be like, look, I want to do this. And they're like, yeah, okay, we can do this. And it gives the DM a bit more control so that they don't do something too wild.
So the DM can present background specific to their world. Yes. But just handing that to the players, it's like, okay, well, in that case, everybody just... Choose three abilities, a feat, two skills, a tool, and some equipment then. Okay. You know, the background serves no purpose.
Yeah. What was a bit about ability scores at the start? You choose three ability scores.
How was that going? So ability score boosts have moved from species to background. Good.
Like we did three years ago. No, they're doing their best. All right.
Yeah. So, yeah, so you choose three and you can either increase, I think, as of course, this is right in front of me, you can either increase three by one or one by two and one by one, I think. Okay. It's the only combination you could do, actually, isn't it, with three?
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, you could have plus three to one.
Oh, yeah. Okay, fair enough. No, you can't do plus three to one, yeah? Yeah, yeah. That would be a lot. Yeah. Yeah. So that's custom backgrounds, anyway. Okay. So now we can talk about Greyhawk.
Huzzah! Yay! Greyhawk!
Jess has been waiting for this moment. Clearly excited about Greyhawk.
Well, it's just something I'd read about and have opinions on things to talk about. So that's fair enough.
That's what you know about Greyhawk. And what makes you excited or, I don't know, dreading it? Well... Not that that's the right term. The right opposition.
I'm not specifically like, oh, I'm so excited for Greyhawk. But I just thought it was interesting because it's not been... It's not a setting that's had a lot of love from what I understand, like historically in D&D. Interestingly, I know that on the Dungeon Masters Guild, it's now unlocked as a setting. So third party creators can sell material set in the world of Greyhound.
Yes.
So that's cool. So it opens up some options for third party publishers on there. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I think it's only like 30. It's a 30 page chapter.
That's correct, yes. Wow, that's a lot of space.
From what I understand, they've got the setting, but the idea is it's quite a generic setting so people can pick it up and fill stuff with it in many senses. I don't know a huge amount about it.
Okay, so Greyhawk is, I guess, they say it was the first campaign setting. I think Blackwall was technically the first, but it was certainly the first published as a product. So it was like Gary Gygax's home campaign in the early 1970s. Oh, cool.
Okay.
But I don't think it was like till 1980 or so that it was physically published as a product. And that product wasn't a big one. It was like, I want to say pamphlet. It was more than a pamphlet, but it was kind of a booklet and a map, kind of. It wasn't big. And kind of it was very much left for the DM to fill in the gaps.
So you'd have a map and you'd have sort of like some details about areas in the map, but the details about them might be a sentence or two. It would say who ruled it and who lived there sort of thing. But it's kind of like this land is ruled by a necromancer. Yeah.
James.
Yeah. And then it kind of, you know, kind of leaves the DM to fill that in.
Hmm.
Now, obviously, later adventures kind of like visited bits and pieces and filled them in anyway. But it is quite straight down the line D&D.
See, I like settings like that that give you a vein thing, like a necromancer. Then you can fill in the details with your own.
Yeah. But, you know, it's a setting that's got no sort of like hooks. Hooks is the wrong word. Gimmicks. That's the wrong word as well. I know what you mean.
It's not... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not...
It's like standard.
Standard fantasy D&D.
Everyone has, like, Magitek and Dragonlance has lots of dragons and lances and Ravenloft is horror.
It's not got its own unique flavour attached to it. It's just... It's a roast dinner of a D&D campaign. There's no extra seasonings involved.
It's like the first campaign setting that you'd probably make when you saw that.
What they also talked a little bit about is it kind of made a lot of the tropes of D&D.
Yeah.
And then when you look back at it, it's very tropey, standard D&D. But it's kind of awesome that's where it kind of came from.
Because it was the first one.
Yeah. Yeah. So it has a bit of that going with it as well.
Yeah. I guess it's like when you read early science fiction books, you're like, oh, I feel like I know this. But it's not because that is generic itself. It's because it was the first one and everything else has kind of springboarded off that.
Yeah. The phrase we're groping around for is seminal words. As in, they're the scenes from which other stuff grew. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Correct. Yes, thank you. I did not have that word. Thank you for providing this. This is why we're a team.
You're very welcome. At present, they're kind of like, they don't have any current intention to return to Greyhawk. Okay. Outside of this. So, as you said a minute ago, Jess, they've opened it up on DMs Guild for third parties to make stuff for Greyhawk. Yeah. And fill in the gaps. And that kind of leans into the whole concept of Greyhawk, where the DMs would do that anyway. Yeah.
Which kind of, I suppose, could be a bit odd, because you'll then get different interpretations of different areas and things in DMs Guild. I suppose that's fine.
That's fine. It's like a tenth rate. setting yeah yeah so as in you uh it's quite sandboxy as well yeah yeah you got sort of a little bit of a set well sandbox very much implies a certain style of campaign where you're going around doing whatever uh so i try and use a tent frame because you have like some tent poles, they go together, and this holds everything up.
But what color is the canvas that you drape over the top? Does it have windows in? What's the designs on it? That's up to you. It's not important, or it's not important to the structural integrity of the tent. Like you could, I don't know, dress it in muslin for all I care. If that's what makes you happy, it will still have the right shape for you to do the things you need to do for a tent.
Does that make sense?
I'm on the metaphor I know what you mean yes and this is exactly kind of what I want from a setting I don't want something really in detail that I have to do a lot of homework for this is like 30 pages for example does feel like I've got a lot of information I can get the vibe I can get what's going on but I can fill in the rest because I love filling things in on the fly in my games especially to my players because usually when my players ask me a question they're like what does this look like I'm like I don't know what do you see and I let them do it as well
like sharing or for all control absolutely yeah well it's because i'm lazy but they like them players seem to like it so it's good it gives them buy-in yeah yeah it gives them buy-in and i don't have to do anything everybody wins
Yeah, like Exalted, that really introduced me to that idea. They were talking specifically about fights, but I'm like, you know what, this is a great plan. Let's have it. And people have got their characters, lean in and support it. And that's the fabric that's going on to these tentpoles. And they can also create some.
I don't have to make the whole thing myself because it's a collaborative, cooperative effort.
Yeah. Yeah, so Greyhawk looks interesting to me because it's, like you say, generic D&D. So people are going to know what's what without having to do a lot of work. But yeah.
Yeah. So looking at what's in that 30-page chapter, so it's a sort of gazette, but it focuses on the city of Greyhawk.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
and the surrounding areas. And it kind of says that as you get further away from the city, because Greyhawk's a big setting as well. If you look at the map, it's enormous. There's loads and loads of locations. But the city of Greyhawk's kind of like the central hub, I guess. And as you get further away from that city, they're more vague about what's there.
So they're quite a bit of detail about the city, a little less about the surrounding area, a little less about the bit beyond that, and then, you know. So they said they kind of did that because they also said that's kind of how, you know, that's an approach to designing a world is you start off just designing the bit you need, like the village and the dungeon or whatever.
And then as the players, the characters grow up and everyone needs to venture further, then you start filling out the world. You don't necessarily have to write Lord of the Rings before starting your campaign, right? to develop Middle-earth before starting your campaign. You just sort of need what you need and expand from there as you need to. And that's something I've done a lot.
It's a hell of a lot easier. A hell of a lot easier. And also, you might end up detailing a far-off town which the players might never visit. So that's kind of why they did that. So the city itself, it's basically like a campaign hub. And those sample adventures in Chapter 4, they're all set in Greyhawk or the surrounding area. City of Greyhawk or the surrounding area. Yeah, yeah. Hmm.
I mean, yeah, we're talking 30 pages here. So there's a map of the city. Not so much, yeah. Yeah. We've got descriptions of a few places the characters might visit. So there's the magic item shops and libraries and three taverns and temples and things like that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and the sort of, like, world map has, like, they've added, like, locations that D&D over the years has visited that weren't originally there back in the 1970s.
The Tomb of Horrors.
Yeah, Wampum Mountain, the Ghost Tower of Inverness, the Lost Caverns of that place. Yeah. Sojan, Sojan, whatever it is.
The salt marshes.
Yeah, that sort of thing. So they've sort of been added onto the map. It does say that it takes quite a few liberties with the setting, but remaining faithful to the spirit of the setting. Interesting. And the impression I get of that is basically modernised a bit. Helpful. There's a balance of NPCs who showcase the diversity of D&D worlds is the phrase they used.
So they're saying it's not all men. All white men, yeah. I think that's what they're saying.
Woke.
indeed what will you come up with next like having more than one demographic in a fantasy world yeah yeah yeah and I guess basically sort of like the style of it as well has like probably been modernised a little bit because people play a little differently now to how they used to as well yeah people play wildly differently now yeah people are worldly differently to each other yeah from back then yeah
There's a lot of emergent stuff that's happened.
Yeah.
I read people's accounts of their games. I'm like, wow, okay. Choices are being made.
Good for you. Tell you what was interesting, though. Back before the internet, when basically you played these games in isolation and didn't really know how other people were playing them, because the internet wasn't there, and you didn't necessarily know other people that played. Yeah. These days, it's like you just go online and you can –
You can watch other people's games on actual players.
I see people talking about it and stuff like that. You've got a good idea of the broad range of ways in which you could play D&D. But when people played and all they had was the rule books to go by and developed their own gaming styles based on just that, with no advice, no examples...
Yeah, yeah.
You'd find that one group of players and another group would play very, very differently and have no idea and would possibly, if one crossed over to another one's game, they'd be like, I don't understand what's going on here. Yeah.
I think that's why now safety tools are so important and session zeros, just because to make sure everyone's expectations are in the same place.
That's kind of also what Adventurous League and stuff is for, isn't it?
To make sure everything's standardised across different... Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way, because I've not really done Adventurous League stuff. I haven't thought about it in that sense.
Yeah, so you go from one game to another without any confusion.
It depends on who you ask. If you were to ask me, I'd say Adventurous League is a way that you actually get to play D&D rules as written, as opposed to... That's another reason for it, yeah.
Throwing their own house.
It has various functions, but yeah. If you were to ask someone else, I'm not saying that they're wrong, not my experience, but if you asked someone else, they'd say D&D is for people with no powers who can't find a regular table to go play at. That's a bit harsh. Yeah.
hmm yeah very rude but yeah that's that it's the same idea but people very different takes on that yeah and i think most frustrations and games breaking down i see that i see online of people writing is usually because people have different expectations of things and they haven't explicitly said it that's like yeah it's like i was doing a because i was doing horror games this weekend i have a safety sheet
i get people to opt in on the safety sheet in advance and it has a list of topics there's some weird stuff on there when you see that sheet out of context and somebody saw it and they're like what is this why would you have that in a game and i'm like i don't have it in the game as you can see in this one that's saying that's not topic we're doing but it warrants saying because if i don't explicitly say it someone might think that's okay to put in because for someone else that might not be a obviously that's not going to be included so okay yeah yeah
I mean, I very much decided I was going to commit to session zero as being a good idea when I started my first D&D camp. In fact, one of the players came from Strictly Board Games and they were like, wait, I have to cooperate with people? What? We have to share our treasure? And everyone else was like a good RPG communist.
I know people like that, but they also take it one step further. They won't even play collaborative board games. The ones where you're all on the same side. Those ones. If they're not adversarial, they won't play them.
In this particular case, it was because being a young lady, as it was, she had a very bad experience of being quarterbacked, which is where someone tries to tell her how to play the game. which is like, never go fly at my table, because I'm like, oh, was I talking to you? No?
Then please be quiet and let this person whose name I shall not reveal... The worst is when someone tells you how to play your character.
Yeah. I find that very, very irritating.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, all right, it depends. Occasionally there was, like, somebody was playing a barbarian and they kept missing, and, like... you know you could recklessly attack, which would give you advantage. Yeah, okay. That's fine, that's fine. That's as far as I'll go.
The mechanical advice is different. That's different to just telling people how they should act or what their character should do. If it's like a... It depends on the context.
It depends on the context. They could better achieve what their stated goal is. I feel a lot happier with. I'm not going to tell them how to role play or what decision I should be making. That's their own problem. I'm busy with my own problems.
Yeah, I'm not going to tell you what your motivations should be and what your goals should be and what you should want to do, but I will mechanically help you to achieve that. If you're like, oh, I wanted to do this thing, but I failed this role, you'd be like, oh, well, you could instead, blah, blah, blah. And then they can sometimes go, oh, yeah, I'll do that. Yeah.
Or they can just ignore you, which is fine for me.
Yeah.
It's not a me problem, it's definitely a you problem.
Yeah, no. Yeah, both of them are supposed to be different, but yeah. But yeah, interesting about Back to Greyhawk with, yeah, because we... Yeah, what else have we got?
I mean, so, yeah, we've got the map of the city there. We've got the diversity of the city. The backgrounds in the player's handbook apparently all map to locations in the city.
Mm-hmm.
So that if you take a background in the player's handbook, there is a place in that city that you could conceivably say, yes. Like, you know, I don't know, town guard, whatever. It's an obvious one. And the example they use in the video. But any background in the player's handbook fits in that city. You won't take a background and then find, oh, there's no place for it. Yeah.
Okay. So it's a sort of a port city. Support some sailors. Yeah.
Cool.
There's three sort of, what they call, three iconic D&D Greyhawk conflicts, they call them. And these are Elemental Evil, which is a sort of classic faceless adversary. We've got Ayaz, or Eaz, the evil Cambrian demigod, who has a whole kingdom in Greyhawk named after him, and he rules that. All right. And dragons, apparently, is the third one. Evil dragons. Which, yeah, fine.
Didn't you have an article on your site, Russ, in World, about dragons playing the great game or something? Or did I read that somewhere else? Dragons playing the great game. Muffin Ring, Rascal, sorry. No, doesn't ring a bell. Yeah, yeah, like the great game being the British up to like truly highest colossal amounts of bullshit round about the 1800s versus Russia, France, Germany, Prussia,
and just like maneuvering for power and having the dragons up to no such good uh instead and uh using mortals as their pawns in a sort of way that you know in more modern times we've had the cold war and proxy conflicts yeah though i assume that's what they mean but maybe not because that seems like not too many people just playing risk with the world yeah except the dragons yeah
Yeah. Well, that's it. That's basically all we know about Greyhawk for the moment.
I'm sure we'll get more info about the... Yeah, we'll get more.
We'll get more.
As the weeks roll on.
We'll definitely get more.
And then we'll actually have a copy.
I mean, these videos are coming out. How do you now feel about Greyhawk now, then, Jess? Now you've heard a little more about it.
Well, you...
well there you go it feels like a good generic setting that doesn't have too much going on I don't if I were to run if I wanted to run a D&D campaign I don't think I'd do but if I did that would be the kind of setting I'd use because it's like you know this generic D&D fantasy setting that you're all familiar with it's kind of that I don't have to do a lot of homework and lore I'm not going to have a player on the table sit and go actually that can't be the case because back in 1602 I don't know something happened
because that's what I don't want to deal with so yeah good not really a strong opinion but it's the one I have because that's what I can give you yeah I wonder how popular the sort of DMs Guild stuff is going to be and how much people will put in there because I think with Greyhawk you can pretty much take anything you've written and just slap the word Greyhawk on it and it will fit in there somehow yeah
Yeah. Easily enough.
This was. Job done. Yeah, I mean, and to be fake, we've got stuff like Savage Pathfinder kicking out there. kicking around out there. So if you're like, oh, I like a bit of Greyhawk, you know, Savage Worlds is pretty easy to pick up. It's got like a Dungeons & Dragons-esque Pathfinder rule set. I think that feels like a very nice little kit-bashed setting. Yeah. Setting assistant. Yeah.
Or, I don't know, Barbarians of Lumeria. Grab that. Use that. No problem.
Is that all for this week?
Yeah. That is all for this week, yes. That is all for this week.
Well, that's all for this week, then. All right, then.
Goodbye for now. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. See you all next week. Same bat time, same bat place.
Apparently I now have to read this to you. This is the official podcast of Morris' unofficial tabletop RPT news, which you can find at enworld.org. You can find show notes at morris.podbean.com or wherever you found the podcast. If you feel like they deserve it, you can support the show on Patreon. In return, you will receive exclusive bonus content. Just go to patreon.com slash Morris.
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I'm recording this afterwards because I forgot to do my obligatory reason to talk about Baldur's Gate 3 on the podcast this week. So I'm just going to fix that. In the Dungeon Master's Guide, there is a piece of artwork at a ball and there is a picture of Minsc and Boo in that artwork. So that is my fun Baldur's Gate 3 fact of the week. Thank you.